Editorial: Launch of Materials Plus

Abstract

Today’s intense search for materials with superior functional performance and at lower manufacturing cost but based on novel approaches is evident in all the fields of research and materials including metals, synthetic organic materials as well as for materials derived from renewable resources. Materials research is the foremost discipline today guiding progress in many different and various fields of technological engineering. This is due to the strong interdisciplinarity of this field of research with a great variety of specializations contributing to its advancement. These investigations range from the atomic, molecular, nanoscale size up to complex structures even at the macro-engineering size, all this defining how large this field of research can really be, i.e., nanoscopic control of our macroscopic world. Great advances have been made in recent years in the Materials, e.g., in their engineering, chemistry, physics, biology and many others, including some very novel materials. Research in this field is also accelerating as the fundamental understanding has dawned that is mostly the research and the novelties in this field that will allow great progresses in future to be achieved, even in applications not even thought of today. Who can forget that the flight machine of Leonardo da Vinci could perhaps have fled, hence advancing aviation technology of three centuries if ultralight materials had been available in the 16th century? A clear indication that progress in materials being fundamental to engineering progress was a concept not really understood then, but that it is clearly understood today.